


a hollow nest to dream in

by lacking, Quadriviuum



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brief mention of self-harm, Dark Shiro makes an appearance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Some Matt/Shiro if you squint (Alternate realities. Things get tricky), Team as Family, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 13:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11760885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacking/pseuds/lacking, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quadriviuum/pseuds/Quadriviuum
Summary: Shiro blinks and sees a black sun reflected on dark water, his own fingers wrapped tightly around his lion’s controls. Constellations spin overhead and a view screen flickers in front of his eyes, the images blending together like a poorly exposed photograph. There’s a sharp pull deep within his chest, a hook slipping in between two ribs that catches when it tries to lift free.Shiro becomes unfixed in space and time after vanishing from the Black Lion, slipping between alternate versions of his life. The paladins try to bring him back, but their interference could be causing more harm than good.





	a hollow nest to dream in

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Voltron General Big Bang!](http://voltronbang.tumblr.com/). A huge thank you to Quadriviuum for all the effort she put into creating some truly stunning artwork for this fic! She was an absolute delight to work with and I'm so humbled by what she's accomplished. Please go [here](https://quadriviuum.tumblr.com/post/164021385049/drawings-to-accompany-lightshesaids-beautifully) to marvel!

Shiro can still feel the shadow of the Black Lion’s wings unfolding at his back, the phantom sensation of the universe reforming itself around him. His entire body hurts, cramping with a bone-deep ache like he’s just been thrown over the edge of chasm and left to tumble his way to the ground, and there’s a taste in his mouth like blood or vomit though he doesn’t remember being sick.

The Black Lion whispers to him, sympathetic but ultimately without apology. It was too soon, she knows, he wasn’t prepared for her to share that power with him. But the bayard is as much hers as it is his, and she can no longer allow a piece of herself to be held captive, hoarded by a creature that she does not recognize and is no longer worthy of her.

Zarkon sneers in the face of her rejection, slamming the hands of his corrupted suit against Voltron’s head. Shiro recoils from the impact as though it were a physical blow, metal plated gauntlets crushing down over his skull and squeezing it between them like a vice.

_Give me the lion,_ Zarkon hisses, even as the thing he reaches for recoils, burrowing deeper into the recesses of Shiro’s mind. _Give me_ —

_No._ Shiro says. The taste of iron sharpens in his mouth. _Get out, **get out**._

Energy crackles over the control panel, shuddering up Shiro’s arms and buzzing around his ears. He feels it gather in his bones like a pulse, flashing along his spine in time with the rapid beat of his heart.

His vision blurs. Shiro blinks and sees a black sun reflected on dark water, his own fingers wrapped tightly around his lion’s controls. Constellations spin overhead and a view screen flickers in front of his eyes, the images blending together like a poorly exposed photograph. There’s a sharp pull deep within his chest, a hook slipping in between two ribs that catches when it tries to lift free.

The bayard is a grounding weight in his hand, oddly heavy when Shiro lifts his arm to jam it into the console. There’s a scream rising in his throat that’s echoed by the rest of the paladins, and Shiro can _feel_ his fingers curling around the hilt of Voltron’s sword, feel the others pressing in against his shoulders as if they were physically crowded around him. Together they twist their wrist, driving the blade home, and a sense of elation flutters through the bond, swelling up inside of Shiro until something

_—tears._

Surrounded by starlight, Shiro stumbles. The astral plane sways around him, thin and unstable, rippling like a reflection on choppy water. It creaks beneath his feet, twisting along the line of the horizon where Zarkon stands to meet him.

 _”Do you think you’ve won?”_ Zarkon asks. Shiro can’t decide if the words are being spoken aloud or only ringing inside his head. Distantly, he hears something like an explosion, can almost see the red-yellow burn of it sparking behind his eyes.

_”I think you’ve lost,”_ Shiro tells him, understanding it’s not the same thing.

Zarkon laughs. The sound is low and grating and ugly, making Shiro think of broken glass being crushed beneath a boot. The pull inside his chest grows stronger as something akin to panic shivers along his connection to the Black Lion, vining outward and taking root within him as a warning: _careful, careful._

The unnatural glow of Zarkon’s eyes sparks as the astral plane shifts around them, folding in on itself. Neither Shiro nor Zarkon physically move, but the distance dividing them bleeds away, running like wet gobs of paint on a canvas. 

Zarkon’s fingers close around Shiro’s throat, his arm lashing out before Shiro can swing up his prosthetic to block him. Shiro kicks out when he’s lifted from his feet, spittle flecking over his lips, and Zarkon sneers before slamming him back down. The glassy surface of the astral plane shatters at the impact, and Shiro is engulfed by the cold, dark depths.

He thrashes, metal fingers clawing at the wrist of Zarkon’s gauntlet, leaving behind gouges so deep they break through to skin. Liquid floods Shiro’s mouth and nose, thicker and more vile than water could ever be, and through a clouded haze he can see the the gleam of Zarkon’s fangs, smiling down at him as he drowns.

The Black Lion roars inside Shiro’s head. She doesn’t arrive to help him, and from somewhere far away Shiro can almost hear someone calling out his name, asking him where he’s gone as his eyes drift shut.

 

 

(She’s not supposed to be here. 

Father has scolded her about it before. He says she needs to be more courteous, to mind her caretakers and finish her studies before running off to explore the gardens. Sometimes, he grows angry when she’s caught. His brows lower over his eyes and he speaks to her in a soft, stern voice that makes her feel so small and so guilty she wishes he would just yell at her instead. 

But every now and then, Father almost seems to find her outings amusing. He sweeps her up in his arms and shakes his head, dramatically laments the cruel turn of fate that allowed his wife’s stubbornness to pass on to his only daughter before pressing a kiss to her hair. 

She tries her best not to go against his wishes, even though she reasons it’s certainly no fault of her own that her teachers are so dull and boring. But when she discovers the lesson plan for the next three quintants involves nothing more than overviewing the history of the Altean-Galran alliance —well. How could she be faulted for not wanting to be there, when she already read the reference books for herself a year before?

Sneaking out onto the courtyard is an easy enough task, and she’s had plenty of practice at scaling the garden walls. The bell-curve edge of her sleeve catches on the rough stone and tears just as she pushes herself over the top, but the rip is small and clean and should be easy enough to repair.

The juniberries greet her in full bloom, their blush-coloured blossoms nodding lazily above the freshly trimmed grass in the breeze. She claps her hands together once in delight, crouching down to draw her thumb along a delicate petal, careful not to let it tear beneath her touch. The desire to gather a bouquet and take it back with her is a tempting one, but she suspects neither her parents nor teachers would appreciate being presented with such a brazen token of her disobedience. 

“Allura?”

She looks up with a start, loose curls brushing over her jaw as her hair falls back from her face. There’s a stranger standing next to the ugly k’jarr shrub Coran brought back with him from his excursion to the Keltor sector, dressed completely in black with a livid scar carved across the bridge of his nose. For a moment she almost mistakes him for an Altean citizen before noticing his unmarked cheeks and small, rounded ears. 

Allura jump to her feet, stumbling on the skirt of her dress, accidentally trampling over a cluster of juniberries. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I—I don’t know,” the stranger says. He looks about himself with a strange sort of urgency, the whites of his eyes flashing as he turns his head. “Allura, why are you—? Did you change your appearance?” 

“What are you talking about?” Allura snaps, making sure to straighten her spine, to lift her chin up high. Her fingers are itching for the comfort of her training staff, no doubt sitting safely in a cupboard just off the sparring grounds, but she refuses to allow the presence of this interloper to intimidate her even without it. “And it’s _Princess._ ” 

The stranger blinks, a strange expression crossing over his face. Confusion, perhaps. Shock. He takes a careful step backwards, holding up his hands to show her his empty palms.

“I’m sorry,” he says, the words coloured by a faint smile. The small tilt of his lips only seem to deepen the lines that mark his face, but somehow make him look younger, too. “I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful. I just—I think I took a wrong turn.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Allura says, jabbing her finger in his direction. “You couldn’t have snuck onto the castle grounds by accident.” 

His smile slips. The stranger shakes his head, seemingly at a loss.

The wisest decision would be to run. There’s still some distance between Allura and the stranger, and though his legs are long his stance isn’t one that belies the intention to pounce. If Allura fled now she’s confident that she could make it to the wall first, could scamper up towards the top and call for the guards long before the stranger even managed to kick off the ground.

Only— the stranger doesn’t frighten her. There’s something almost familiar about his grey eyes and sad smile, and the longer Allura looks at him the more she begins to wonder if they’ve met before. He could be an emissary from another planet. He could be in trouble. 

Allura rolls back her shoulders and marches forward, peering curiously the stranger’s prosthetic arm before grabbing at his opposite wrist. “Come with me.”

The stranger blinks down at her. “Where?”

“You need to speak to my father.”

“... King Alfor?”

“Yes, of course.” Not an emissary, then, though Allura is still stubbornly certain he means her no harm. “You don’t have to be frightened, you know.” 

“I’m not.”

“You _are_. I can tell.” Allura pulls at his arm, growing impatient. She puts enough strength behind it to force him a step forward, dragging the stranger along even when he tries to dig in his heels.

“All right, all right,” the stranger says. His laughter is rough and strange. “Lead the way, Princess.”

Allura turns to do just that, and the strangers wrist slips from her fingers.

“What— ?” Allura looks over her shoulder, wrinkling her nose, ready to scold the stranger for being difficult, but finds herself completely alone. She spins around in a full circle, doubling back to check behind the nearby water-top tree and the lukard hedge and even the horrible k’jarr shrub. She cuts a path off towards the edge of the garden and walks around the perimeter, confirming there’s no sign of anyone else in the area and no footprints embedded in the dirt but her own.) 

 

 

Surrounded by starlight, Shiro stumbles. Water ripples under his feet as the astral plane spins around him, twirling like a coin on a tabletop. Shiro hunches over, curling his fingers into fists and pushing them hard against his eyes, fighting down the sick roll of his stomach, the untethered sensation of weightlessness that’s settled over him. He stomps one foot against the ground just to reassure himself it’s still there, and only then dares to lift his face to peer up at the space where the sky should be. The stars hanging above him are unfamiliar, cold and faraway and not what he wants to see. 

His throat hurts. He wonders if Zarkon is still waiting for him in the dark, or if he’s been consumed by this place, too.

“Black?” Shiro calls, his voice echoing out towards the horizon. He reaches for their bond, prodding at the little knot that lives in the back of his head, always there no matter how far apart they are from each other. He tugs at it like a fish on a line, waiting for an answering pull that doesn’t come. 

_It’s okay,_ he tells himself. _It’s okay. She’ll find you. She wouldn’t just leave you here._

The purple haze engulfing the astral plane begins to wane as the stars gutter out, fading away one by one until only two remain. They bore into him like eyes, and Shiro could almost believe it was his Lion peering out at him through the void if not for the slack weight of their bond.

_I see you Champion,_ the eyes seem to whisper, narrowing into gleaming, yellow slits. Shiro shrinks back, but there’s nowhere for him to hide. _I **see** you— _

 

“Shiro! Hey, it’s okay!”

There are hands squeezing at his shoulders, bearing down even as Shiro tries to twist free. The world reforms around him in jagged pieces and he can’t make out the face hovering above him, can’t slot the eyes and mouth and nose together into something that makes sense. 

“Jesus,” someone says. There’s a clutter of sound, the shuffle of bare feet moving against the floor. “Shiro, it’s me, okay? You need to breathe.”

That voice— Shiro knows that voice. 

“M-Matt?”

“Yeah, hi.” Matt’s glasses flash in the dim light as he nudges them up the bridge of his nose. The motion is small and achingly familiar, charming in how it reveals a red strip of skin where the frames had been digging in. It gives Shiro something to focus on. “Do you know where you are?”

Nervous laughter bubbles up in Shiro’s throat, spills out his mouth. He knows where he isn’t and he knows where he should be, which seems like a remarkable feat in and of itself right now.

“Okay,” Matt says, hiking his knee onto the edge of the mattress. He leans forward, fitting his palm to Shiro’s cheek like it belongs there. “You’re spinning out. I can tell. Just take a deep breath and look around. Where are you?”

“The… castle,” Shiro says slowly. He recognizes his room, the damp sheets rucked up beneath him, his helmet propped up against the ledge on the far wall. But there are differences, too: an unfamiliar robe hanging on the hook by the door, a tablet sitting on the floor next to his bed beside a pair of lion-headed slippers that Shiro has never worn.

“Great, got it in one.” Matt smiles at him, his thumb stroking delicately along the line of Shiro’s cheekbone. 

Shiro flinches, his stomach wobbling uncomfortably. Matt’s touched him before, but it’s never been fueled by anything more than friendly companionship or a played up, teasing flirtation. He’s not to sure what to do with this Matt, who reaches for Shiro like it’s nothing, who seems to be acting on something born between them that Shiro hasn’t been made privy to.

Matt drops his hand, looking a little sad but resigned.

“I can go, if you want,” Matt says.

“Don’t,” Shiro croaks, suddenly terrified of being left alone, unsure of what will happen if he lets Matt walk away. He can still feel whisps of the astral plane clinging to him, and were he to close his eyes for long enough Shiro is sure that he’d open them again to find himself somewhere else entirely.

“Or not.” Matt shifts his weight, settling fully onto the bed next to Shiro, fingers brushing over his leg as he pushes into Shiro’s personal space. “Still kind of worked up, huh?” 

The last time Shiro saw Matt he looked small and frightened. His cheeks were gaunt and his glasses were cracked and there was dried blood crusting beneath his nails. He formed a habit of raking his fingers across his arms after Sam had been dragged away, and sometimes Shiro needed to take Matt’s wrist in his hands to make him stop, to keep him from digging in too deep. 

“Is your leg okay?” Shiro asks.

“What?”

“Your leg. I broke it. I heard the crack—”

“Shiro—” Matt shakes his head, and Shiro can practically see the gears whirring behind his eyes. “Is that what you were dreaming about?”

“I wasn’t dreaming,” Shiro says. “Something’s wrong, Matt. I shouldn’t be here. _You_ shouldn’t be here.”

“I mean… sure? None of us should be when you get down to it.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I was in space, with the others, and we haven’t even _found_ you yet—”

Matt’s beginning to look worried now, his round eyes pinching in at the corners. “Shiro, you need to calm down.”

“No,” Shiro hisses. He grabs at Matt’s shoulder, has to actively resist the urge to shake him. “You’re not listening to me! Something’s happening, and I need your help to—”

 

 

“Stop, stop, look!”

“Shiro!”

“It worked!"

“You’re back!”

Shiro recoils from the sudden flood of light searing against his retinas. His legs buckle, knees cracking hard against the floor, and the voices around him rise, laced with excitement and concern.

“Loud,” is all Shrio manages to choke out, his ears ringing as his head throbs. An arm catches him around the waist, hefting Shiro right back up to his feet and holding him steady as a sickening wave of dizziness crashes over him.

“Sorry man,” Hunk says. “Maybe yelling at you wasn’t the best idea ever.”

“I did tell them to be gentle,” Allura says, stepping forward, her hands clasped together primly. “Slav warned us the process might be difficult for you.”

“Are you hungry?” Pidge pushes in next to Hunk, and the sight of her bright eyes looking up at Shiro from behind the gleam of her glasses makes something twist painfully in his chest. Matt. Where’s Matt?

“Hunk made cookies,” Lance says after an awkward beat, waving a finger at Shiro as if scolding him for his silence. “Like, edible ones, this time.”

A hand falls on Shiro’s shoulder, curling over the hard line of his armour, giving him a gentle, friendly shake.

“It’s good to have you back.” Keith says, and surprises Shiro by laughing a little. “Again.”

“I’m not,” Shiro murmurs. Even with Hunk’s support he feels off balance, teetering. He can hear the slow trickle of water, feel the push-pull of the universe expanding around him.

“You do seem a little delirious, Number One” Coran says, stroking a finger over his moustache. “I believe a nap might be in order.”

“I don’t think that’s going to help.”

Shiro scans his friend’s faces, taking in their confusion, the slow descent of their elation. He hates it, that he’s ruining this for them, but they need to know that something’s wrong, that he’s not— that he was—

“I saw Matt,” Shiro says. “He was here, on the ship.”

He wants to tell them more, about Zarkon and the astral plane and his failure to reach the Black Lion, but hesitates when he catches sight of Allura’s eyes. A strange sense of déjà vu comes over him, coupled with the absolute certainty that he’s forgotten something. The scent of flowers and soil becomes suddenly overwhelming, and for a moment the memory is right _there_ , lingering on the tip of his tongue.

It’s gone again just as quickly, vanishing between one heartbeat and the next, and Shiro is pulled away along with it.

 

 

(To Coran’s credit, he’s not a man who’s quick to give into despair. Why, when he was turned down for the accolade apprenticeship as budding lad he hardly allowed it to phase him, and he’s been on more than one mission in his time that ended up turning sideways. He knows how to accept a bad situation, how to work with the hand fate delivers tp make it a better one. 

But being stranded in the damp, cloying heat of the Turich jungle for weeks on end is enough to make even Coran a little moody. It’s been five quintants since he finished his recon mission, five quintants since he was meant to board the ship that would take him home Altea. There’s an electrical storm brewing along the planet’s atmosphere, and though Coran’s been expecting it for some time he hadn’t realized it would cause of such a delay, underestimated how much it would interfere with the ship’s instruments. They could descent and retrieve him if Coran found a proper landing sight and set up flares, but it would be a risky and hazardous endeavour. Better to be patient, to wait.

Coran sighs, piercing a straw into his water pouch, flicking at the end before taking a sip. His radio’s been unreliable for hours now, fading in and out at random intervals, and while the local wildlife may be beautiful it offers little in the way of company.

Truth be told, it’s almost a relief when a stranger wanders out of the jungle and into Coran’s encampment, even if that person has no business being on this side of the planet.

“Um,” the stranger says. He must have stumbled recently —the knees of his pants are muddy and there are twgs in his hair. “Hi?”

Coran leaps to his feet, throwing his water aside as he settles into a defensive stance, spinning around three times on his heel and pushing back his left leg, lifting his arm over his head, ready to strike. 

The stranger leans back slightly, low-hanging leaves brushing over his shoulders. The corner of his mouth twitches.

“Oh, you think this is funny, do you? Spoiling for a good fight? I’ll have you know that I, Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe have never been bested when using the Legendary Lunge style of my ancestors!” 

“I don’t want to fight,” the stranger says.

“Oh? Just out for a nighttime stroll in the deadly jungle, then?”

“You’re out here too?”

“Excuse you, I am a highly trained operative studying the life cycle of carnivorous plants. I am more than qualified to—”

“—Carnivorous?” The stranger looks over his shoulder, his eyes almost comically wide as he quickly steps away from the tree at his back.

“They tend to be more inland.” Coran drops his arm, humming as he makes a show of looking the stranger up and down. “Now, I know you’re not one of the locals, so don’t even try it with that line.” 

“I wouldn’t. Coran, I—”

The stranger cuts himself off, his jaw clenching, eyes flickering about nervously. There’s a desperation in how he spoke Coran’s name that gives him reason to pause, to reconsider the situation.

“Perhaps you should sit down,” Coran offers. His rations are thin, but if he’s careful there should be enough left to share.

“I know you,” the stranger blurts out. “When you’re older, we—”

His voice cuts off with a strangled sound. Coran blinks and takes a step back, his surroundings rippling like the surface of a disturbed pond. The stranger has vanished by the time it settles, and Coran sits down hard, his breath catching in his chest as he stares out into the dark.)

 

 

Static crackles in Shiro’s ear. Pidge’s voice sounds tinny and hollow through the mic when she says, “ETA ten minutes. Dobashes. Whatever. Can you hold out?”

“If we must,” Ulaz says, lifting his rifle. He’s sitting next to Shiro, shoulder to shoulder behind the charred remains of a Galra fighter, laser blasts dinging off its singed hull. Ulaz pushes up onto his long legs, gravel crunching beneath his boots as he returns fire, the gun rattling in his hands.

“Shiro!” He calls, sharp teeth flashing in the red glow of an alien sun.

Shiro sucks in a ragged gasp of air, trying to orient himself around the noise of battle, the weight of the strange weapon in his hands. Ulaz spares him a quick glance, wrinkling his nose as his ears twitch.

“What is it?” He asks, unnervingly calm even in the chaos erupting around them. He sounds almost soft, concerned. “What is wrong?”

Shiro settles onto his knees and doesn’t answer. There’s a small unit of sentires approaching from the south, and it’s easier to fall back on instinct than it is to try and piece together what he’s doing here. Shiro looks down the barrel of his rifle, squeezing the trigger once, twice, three times. The robots crumple into a neat line, metal clanking against the orange soil, sending up clouds of dust and grit.

“We will not have much time until the next wave arrives,” Ulaz says, returning to Shiro’s side, grabbing his shoulder and urging him back down beneath the cover. He’s frowning beneath the slope of his hood. “You hesitated.”

“Sorry,” Shiro says. His hands are shaking, and though his suit’s cooling system has kicked on he almost unbearably warm, sweat stinging at his eyes and dewey on the back of his neck. 

“Shiro?” Hunk’s voice wavers over the comms. “You okay? You sound kind of weird.”

“Fine,” Shiro says. A lie, but there’s a comfort in speaking it, in allowing his role as leader to buoy him up. Shiro has a terrible feeling that if he even tried to say anything more, to explain what was going on, he’d be gone again before finishing his sentence. 

Ulaz turns to him, narrowing his lamp-lit eyes.

“Take off your helmet,” he says.

“Uh,” Lance says. “Why?”

“What’s going on?” Keith asks. “Shiro, are you hurt?”

Ulaz pulls back his hood, ruffling the white line of fur atop his head. “Do as I say.”

For all that Shiro does not understand about what’s happening to him, he knows that this Ulaz is not the same person he met inside a Galran operation room. The Ulaz who saved him, who snuck aboard the castleship and told him about the Blade of Marmora is long dead, crushed within a warped pocket of gravity inside the belly of a monster. 

Still, Shiro can’t bring himself to distrust the alien kneeling at his side. Maybe this Ulaz did the exact same thing for someone else. Maybe he’s even done more.

“Give us a minute, guys.” Shiro says, a little steadier now. He tucks his fingers beneath the shell of his helmet, cutting of Lance and Hunk’s baffled scoff, Keith’s protest and Pidge’s questions as he slips it over his ears.

“You will not be honest if they can hear you,” Ulaz explains, gently but with a confidence that surprises Shiro. “What is wrong? Did you have a nightmare?”

“Nightmare?”

Ulaz’s ears flicker again, pressing back flat against his head. “You know I do not have the word. We have spoken on this before.”

“You might need to remind me.”

“You are elsewhere.” Ulaz says, touching his fingers to his own brow to indicate his meaning. “I know it happens, sometimes.”

It takes Shiro a moment to respond to that.

“Yeah,” he says, and he doesn’t feel like he’s being dishonest, this time.

“But you understand that wherever you were, you are not there now?”

Shiro ducks his head and nods. He wants to laugh, but he knows it wouldn’t be a nice sound, that Ulaz wouldn’t understand it.

Ulaz shifts his weight, straightening his back just enough to glance over the corrugated edge of their cover.

“There is another fleet approaching. Stay close to me.”

He knocks their shoulders when Shiro doesn’t reply, brows rising with expectation.

“I will,” Shiro says, and then, before he can stop himself: “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Ulaz turns the rifle over in his hands, checking the clip. If he finds Shiro’s question odd he doesn’t show it.

“Yes Shiro,” he says, bringing his hood back up. “You should replace your helmet. Your paladins will worry.” 

 

 

“Okay, but that’s not gonna matter if— oh!” 

Pidge looks up with a start when Shiro tumbles unceremoniously onto his ass in the middle of the Black Lion’s hangar, flattening a pile of wires and inadvertently pulling out a handful from their ports in Pidge’s cluttered workstation. 

“Ah, he’s here!” Slav’s feet patter against the floor as he darts towards Shiro. He scampers up onto his shoulders, twisting around like a spring to prod at his cheeks, his beak-like mouth scrunching upwards in dismay. “Oh, he does not look very well at _all_. I fear our chances of success have dropped to a mere six percent!”

“No, no, get off,” Shiro says, turning his face away. His stomach lurches violently as saliva floods his mouth.

“Slav, move!” Keith shouts.

Hunk grabs Slav by the back of his collar, hauling him away with a surprised yelp, and something resembling a bucket is pressed into Shiro’s hands just as he doubles over. Vomit burns its way up his esophagus, clotting in his throat, and Shiro continues to retch long after his stomach is empty, dry heaving as sweat drips from his chin and nose. A hand settles on the centre of his back, rubbing up and down his spine.

“There now,” Coran says. “You’re all right.”

“What’s going on?” Shiro asks as soon as he’s able. He closes his eyes and doesn’t raise his head, clenching his fingers around the pail in his hands in a poor attempt to keep them from shaking.

“That does not matter,” Slav says, wriggling away from Hunk and scrambling directly over to Shiro again, pushing his way in between Coran and Keith. “Where were you? How long were you there for? Did you see—?”

Shiro slams prosthetic fist against the floor, the metallic surface buckling beneath his knuckles.

“ _What the hell is going on_?”

His outburst it met with a long stretch of silence, with Pidge’s eyes growing wide and Lance leaning away towards Hunk, Coran twisting around to share a look with Allura that Shrio can’t decipher.

Slav’s click his beak shut. He frowns at Shiro and retreats back to Pidge’s collection of computers.

“We think— or, Slav thinks you’ve been ‘displaced in reality’,” Keith says, folding his legs beneath himself and settling down directly in front of Shiro, his composure betrayed only by the slight hitch in his shoulders. He shoves the bucket out of the way and offers Shiro a packet of water with the straw already in place.

“Which basically means you’re like, hopping through alternate universes,” Hunk says. “Um. We think.” 

“No,” Slav snaps, popping his head over a monitor. “I _know_! I told you before, but you would not listen—”

“Can you stop it?” Shiro asks. Water dribbles over his gloves, catching in the lines of his armour. He’s squeezing the packet too hard.

Slav wobbles his head from side to side, hemming and hawing as he considers. “As I said, there is still a six percent chance the effect can be reversed.”

“Which is actually pretty high, for him,” Lance says, throwing up his arms and crossing them behind his head, grinning at Shiro a little too widely. Shiro figured out some time ago that the more worried Lance is, the calmer he tries to appear.

“We’re using your bond with the Black Lion to track you,” Pidge says, stepping over another cluster of cords to show him the tablet in her hand. “Kind of. See, Black omits a trace amount of energy whenever you enter or leave the astral plane, so really we’re just getting an idea of how many different places you’ve been. See, this line here is you, and these spikes mean you’ve gone somewhere.”

Shiro takes the tablet from her, tapping at the screen to decrease the size of the image. There are at least a dozen different spikes and drop-offs highlighted. “This can’t be right.”

“Oh, you will not remember everything,” Slav says, nodding like he’s in agreement with himself when Shiro looks up in surprise. “It would not be so bad, to only travel back and forth between a few realities, but this is too much. It is overwhelming to your small mind.” 

Shiro eyes Slav, skeptical as to how he could possibly know that with any kind of certainty. But then, if anyone could understand the intricacies that came along with traveling across alternate realities, it would be him.

“You said you saw Matt,” Pidge says quietly. “Do you remember that much?”

“Yeah,” Shiro says. He smiles at her. “He was good, Pidge. He was okay.”

“He was here?” Slav asks.“On this ship? Or somewhere else?”

“Here. I think.”

“And who else have you seen? Where else have you gone? I need to know!”

“Slav believes if he can devise some kind of pattern as to your whereabouts he may have an easier time disrupting whatever Zarkon did to you,” Allura explains, casting Slav an irritated look. “It’s why he’s being so… insistent.”

“I was with Ulaz,” Shiro says after a moment. He’s starting to feel dizzy again, lightheaded. The packet of water slips from his fingers. “He was alive. I… I think I’m going again.”

“Shiro.” Keith leans closer, grabbing at Shiro’s arm as if that could somehow prevent what’s about to happen. The hangar dims around him, turning hazy at the edges. The others move closer, and dropping to their knees, settling their hands onto Shiro’s shoulders and the back of his neck.

“It’s okay.” Hunk says. “We’ll figure this out Shiro. We’ll see you soon.”

He looks frightened, Shiro thinks. They all do. 

 

 

(He finds the dog huddled beneath the veranda that brackets his father’s work shed. It’s dug itself into a small pile of dirt right up against the far corner, its nose pressed down to the dust as it shakes and whimpers. Hunk wandered around to the back of the house a few minutes ago when he heard the noise, dropping down to his knees and pressing his cheek against the grass so he could peer beneath the slats.

“It’s okay, puppy,” Hunk says, reaching out towards the animal, wiggling his fingers to get its attention. The dog shifts, a jerky motion that makes Hunk lurch back, afraid it’s going to spring forward and bite him.

The animals huffs and whines, its little pointed ears pressing flat against its skull.

Hunk shrugs off his backpack and roots around inside for his lunchbox, rummaging for the remaining half of the peanut butter sandwich that he didn’t eat at school. The dog seems interested when Hunk flops back down, a scrap of bread rolled up between his fingers. Its tail thumps against the ground once as it wiggles in place, and Hunk tosses the food towards it, watching with delight as the dog scoots forward to gobble it up.

“Good doggy,” Hunk says, though his happiness is short lived when the dog almost immediately retreats back into its corner, licking at its chops.

"How long have you been at his for?”

Hunk jumps, knocking his head against the bottom of the porch with a yelp. Someone drops down to their knees beside to him.

“Sorry,” the stranger hisses. “That looked like it hurt. You okay?”

“Yes,” Hunk grumbles, rubbing at this head. “There’s a dog.”

The stranger’s eyebrows lift upwards. He seems pleased by the news. “Oh?”

“I’m trying to get it to come out,” Hunk says, holding up his sandwich. “I think it’s hungry.”

"You didn't eat your lunch," the stranger says. He sounds concerned.

"I ate most of it. Sometimes... the other kids make fun of me," Hunk says. It's a strange thing to admit to someone he doesn't know, especially when Hunk hasn’t even told his parents or brothers that yet, but the words leave his mouth before he can think to stop them. For some reason he doesn’t feel embarrassed about it, afterwards.

The stranger frowns. 

"It's fine," Hunk says, hurrying on. "It's not as bad as it use to be. Can you help me get the dog out, Mister?"

"It's not fine," the stranger says, but seems willing to let the matter drop. The puppy is still whining, high-pitched, drawn-out sounds that make Hunk feel sad by association.

"It's scared," Hunk says.

"Mm. I might be able to grab it if i go around."

"What if you spook it? It'll run out the other side and I won't be able to catch it."

"Toss it a little more food. Keep it distracted."

"But—"

The stranger nudges at him with his elbow, so softly he hardly even brushes against the sleeve of Hunk's t-shirt. "C’mon, we can do this."

Hunk bites his lip, wary, but there’s something about the stranger's confidence that makes him feel better about the idea.

The stranger moves, sliding around Hunk towards the side of the shed, staying close to the ground. Hunk tosses another scrap of food, watching as it bounces and rolls along in the dirt, bumping right into the dog’s paw.

The stranger's arm snaps out and the dog squeals when the stranger wraps his hand around its skinny body. Hunk jumps to his feet, afraid that the stranger’s gripping too hard, that he's hurting it.

"It's okay," the stranger says. Hunk isn't if he’s trying to reassure him or the animal. "It's okay, it's okay..."

The dog growls and twists around, jaws snapping though it doesn’t actually champ down on the stranger’s wrist for a bite. Hunk hurries over, ripping what remains of the sandwich in half, and the dog stops struggling to gulp down the food instead, whuffing after it finishes and hesitantly licking the crumbs from Hunk’s fingers.

"It likes me!" Hunk says.

"Yeah," the stranger strokes the dog’s head with his open hand, cradling it against his chest with a prosthetic arm made of metal. Hunk watches the way the sun moves along its gleaming surface, fascinated. He opens his mouth, a dozen different questions cluttering on his tongue. What’s the prosthetic made of? Who manufactured it? How does it move so fluidly—?

"What do you want to do with her?" the stranger asks.

Hunk frowns. "I'm gonna keep it. Her. Her?"

“Her,” the stranger nods. "I think. Here, you should take her before I go.”

“Go where?” Hunk asks, but accepts the dog anyways. She’s small and white, and the fur on her snout hangs down beneath her nose like she has a little moustache. She makes a grumbly sound and wiggles a little in Hunk’s arms but doesn't try to jump down, pressing her damp nose into his neck. 

The stranger doesn’t answer him, and when Hunk looks up he’s already disappeared.

“Huh,” Hunk says. He turns his attention back to the dog still clutched to his chest. Her paws are wet and muddy, but her tail is wagging now, a cautious little movement that makes Hunk smile.

“I didn’t get to thank him,” he says.)

 

 

It’s different this time, the experience of being pulled away. There’s a violence in how Shiro is torn from one place and thrown into another, like pieces of himself are being left behind, clinging desperately to the edges of a reality he can’t get back to. They’re cut loose, unable to withstand the strain. It _hurts,_ , and Shiro doesn’t want to go.

The eyes in the dark have waited for him, watching as Shiro wraps his arms around his chest, seeking to stem the bloodflow from a wound he can’t find. 

_Come to me._

Shiro can almost feel claw-tipped fingers curling over his shoulders, scratching against his spine as they try to draw him in. There’s a warm rush of air against his face, carrying the unmistakable, sour scent that always seems to permeate Galra vessels.

_I will help you._

“I don’t believe you.” Shiro says. He closes his eyes and tumbles into the abyss, falling, falling, falling until—

“Shirogane?”

—until he’s not.

The Earth hangs below him, green and blue and heartbreakingly beautiful. The atmosphere almost seems to glow against the backdrop of the universe, so bright it makes Shiro’s eyes water as he stares at it through the film of his helmet. He gasps on recycled air, the pump inside his suit humming softly as he swallows it down.

The mic in his ear crackles. “Shirogane? Doing all right?”

Shiro doesn’t remember arriving back on Earth after his escape. He knows he must have seen it through the view screen as he struggled with the escape pod’s controls, hands slipping over unfamiliar levers, head still pounding from the explosion that knocked him unconscious hours before, but like so much of his past there’s still something missing, a blank gap he can’t account for. What did he think, when he saw the Earth rise up before him? Was he happy to be home? Frightened?

“Shirogane! Report!”

“I’m here,” Shiro says, his eyes stinging, voice wet. He lifts his hands and cradles the image of the Earth between both of his palms, smiling at his own wistfulness. “I’m good.”

“Uh huh. You just gonna drift there all day, or…?”

“Just taking a minute to admire the view.”

He’s tethered to a space station that he doesn’t recognize, though the design is reminiscent of leo proposal, and the Galaxy Garrison’s insignia is displayed proudly on on its hull. Shiro pads at his sides, locating a tool belt, a control for the jet mounted on his back. He must have taken a wrong step on a space walk or lost his grip on the rails. 

This is where Shiro should be, conducting research amongst the stars and not fighting in an impossible war he never wanted any part of. It makes Shiro happy and it makes him ache, knowing there’s another version of himself that lives this way, completely oblivious to the alternate path his life could have taken.

 

 

The hangar floor is hard against Shiro’s shoulders but almost pleasantly cool on the back of his neck. He blinks open his eyes, surprised to find the Black Lion looming over him, wires streaming down from the ports behind her ears and pooling on the floor around his head, trailing back towards Pidge’s massive cluster of computers.

Shiro dares to let himself hope, tugging gently at their bond and then pulling harder when there’s no break in the dead air resting between him.

_Please,_ he thinks. _Please, I’m right here._

“Are you gonna fall down every time you show up, Shiro?” Lance leans into view, hands on his hips, eyebrow cocked. “Do we need to like, set up a fainting couch for you?” 

“I fell?” Shiro says. He doesn’t remember that. Lance extends his arm and pulls Shiro up into seated position, his mouth twisting into a displeased line when Shiro slumps forward and doesn’t even try to make it to his feet.

Keith hurries over, dropping to his knees in front of Shiro and pushing a synchronization headset into his hands. “Here. Put this on.”

“Hi Shiro,” Pidge says, waving her hand at him over the screen she’s hunched herself behind, Slav and Hunk at her shoulders as Coran hovers over her back. He can hear the patter of her fingers typing away at her computer.

“Where were you?” Slav asks, not even bothering to raise his head.

“Space?” Shiro mumbles, uncertain when it had all been so clear only moments before. “I was… floating.”

Slav makes a huffing sound, clearly unsatisfied with the answer.

“Feeling kind of out of it there, man?” Lance asks, bending down at the waist to peer at Shiro’s eyes.

“I’m not surprised he’s disoriented.” Allura kneels down gracefully at Keith’s side. She plucks the headset from Shiro’s fingers and places it on his brow herself before pushing a bowl of food goo into his hands. “There. Now, you really should eat or drink something while you’re here. You didn’t even touch your water, before.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“Should try anyways,” Keith says. He slips on his own headset, and Shiro blinks as their thoughts blend together, clicking into place like they’ve just formed Voltron between the two of them. It’s disorienting, the uneasy clutter of emotions swirling through Keith’s head, worry and fear bleeding through the link though none of it shows on his face.

Keith’s dark eyes widen beneath the fringe of his hair, his breath catching in his chest before it leaves him in stuttering gasp. Shiro can hardly manage to comprehend what he’s going through, and can’t imagine how difficult it must be for someone else to try and make sense of. 

He reaches up to remove the headset, but Allura grabs his wrist and shakes her head, earrings tinkling against her jaw. “Wait.”

“Keith,” Coran calls out. “Are you all right?”

“Y-yeah. I’m okay. Shiro, I don’t know how you’re handling this.”

“Me neither,” Shiro says. Allura lets go of his arm, and at her persistence Shiro takes a bite of the green goo before asking, “What are you doing?” 

“We’re going to try to… reset you?” Lance says, lifting up his hands a little helplessly, looking over at Hunk for confirmation.

“Sort of,” Hunk says. He settles in closer to Pidge, hunching his shoulders and frowning down at her screen. “We’re gonna try to realign you with this reality.”

“How?”

Slav takes a deep breath, no doubt preparing to embark on a long-winded explanation, but Hunk rushes on before he can begin.

“Slav thinks you need a sticking point, basically. Something or someone to focus on and reconnect you with where you are now. You’ve known Keith the longest, which seemed to get him all excited, so...”

“You must also reaffirm your connection to the Black Lion,” Allura says. “It’s part of your link to the astral plane and can stop you from slipping back into it.”

“It’s not really the astral plane I’m worried about,” Shiro says.

“It should be,” Coran pipes in, sounding entirely too cheerful. “Think of it like a door that’s been left open. You keep slipping through it and going off to who knows where. We need to close it again to keep that from happening.”

Shiro shakes his head. “I can’t— I don’t feel Black, anymore. Not even now. I haven’t since this started.”

“The Black Lion chose you, Shiro,” Allura says. “Zarkon cannot sever that bond, no matter how hard he may try.”

“The chart’s spiking again,” Pidge reports. “We should give this a shot while we still have the chance. Slav, you wanna trigger the thing?”

Slav grumbles something, rattling off a negative string of numbers as he shakes his head. His hands being skittering over the control panel, flicking switches and adjusting dials.

Keith offers Shiro a small smile. 

“We’ve got this,” he says, and Shiro can feel how much he believes it.

_I knew you’d be good at this,_ Shiro thinks, closing his eyes and concentrating hard on the words, making sure they stand out amongst the buzz of his other thoughts.

“That’s not focusing,” Keith says aloud, and then, inside Shiro’s head: _What?_

_Leading._

_That’s not what I’m doing._

Shiro opens an eye, just in time to catch Keith’s pinched expression, the hard pull of his mouth. A mix of humour and pride blooms inside Shiro’s chest, and he pushes it forward so it can pass between them.

_You’re getting there. I can tell._

_I don’t want to have this conversation. You’re coming back._

“Ready?” Coran asks.

Shiro nods and reaches for Black, extending himself between her and Keith as he grasps at the blank abyss her absence has left inside his head. A slight pressure begins to grow in the back of his skull, trickling outwards towards his temples and pressing up behind his eyes. Shiro hears the Black Lion rumble above him, but doesn’t feel it the way that he should, like he’s standing in the eye of a hurricane while somehow remaining untouched by the storm.

“Shiro?” Hunk says.

Shiro shakes his head. “It’s not working.”

“Keep trying,” Lance urges, dropping down next to Keith, hands clenching and unclenching, tucked up into his sleeves.

Something warm and damp trickles over Shrio’s upper lip. He wipes his mouth and nose with the back of his hand, pulling it away to study the bright splash of blood that’s been smeared across the knuckles of his armour.

Keith surges forward, his fingers slipping over the hard panels of Shiro’s shoulders, nails scratching against the smooth surface. 

“Don’t go,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro croaks.

He would stay if he could.

 

 

(The sun has has just risen above the line of the horizon by the time Lance makes it to the beach. He puffs out his cheeks, blowing out a long stream of air as he sheds his shirt, already a little too hot from having to carry his surfboard all this way. No doubt he’ll receive a stern scolding from his mother later on for heading out to the water without his brothers and sisters, but Lance has already been awake for an hour and sees no reason why he should have to wait for them to get up. It’s not like he needs someone to hold his hand, not when he’s been swimming since he was four and surfing for the past three years.

Lance wades into the ocean up to his waist before settling down onto his board, the fiberglass surface almost shockingly cold against his chest and stomach. Water laps at his arms as he paddles himself out into the depths, and Lance is content to close his eyes and breathe deep and let the waves rock him. It’s easy, to just drift there, cracking his eyes open every now and then to keep track of the shoreline. In a minute he’ll stand up and catch the next wave, maybe even see if he can pull a tail slide off now that no one’s around to watch him. If he’s gets good enough he could even show his siblings later. Lola spent almost an hour yesterday making fun of his technique, but Lance bets her tune would change on a dime if she saw him actually carry out the trick.

He must drift off, because the next thing Lance is aware of is the crash of the ocean, the violent rock of his surfboard as it slips out from under him. Lance plunges down into the water with a shout, struggling against the tide as the oceans burns its way up his throat and nose, the salt stinging at his eyes. He’s spun about like a rag doll, helpless to fight against the pull of the current. Bubbles burst from his lips, and Lance tries not to panic, tires not to think about how embarrassing it will be when his family finds out this is how he died: drowned in the ocean because he couldn't just bring himself to wait for his brother or sister to wake up and go with him. 

Something smacks against his shoulder, slipping over wet skin. It takes Lance a moment to realize it’s a hand, fingers scrabbling over his collarbone and the back of his neck, trying to get a grip. Lance grabs at the wrist, nails digging into skin as he kicks his feet through the water. He breaks through to the surface just long enough to suck in a wet gasp of air before another wave crushes him back down.

The hand snaps out, latching around his arm and heaving him up once more into the air and spray. Lance coughs and chokes, spitting out water and hacking on his own saliva. The sky spins above him, and someone is saying it's okay, it’s okay, just calm down.

Lance knows the stories, knows that the most dangerous thing about trying to save someone who’s drowning is the possibility of being dragged down with them. He tries not to cling too hard, tries not to struggle against the arm wrapped around his chest even though he feels like he’s about to slip right back under. He looks up, half expecting to be yelled at by his older brother for being so stupid, but instead he’s greeted by someone he’s never met, a stranger with dark hair run through with a shock of white.

"You okay?" the stranger asks.

"Yeah," Lance tries. The word sticks in his throat, making his voice crack, and Lance’s ears burn. "I... I fell off my surfboard."

"Mm,” the stranger says. “I saw it float away.”

Lance groans. For a moment is almost tempted to stop swimming and let the ocean swallow him whole. He took Lola’s board this morning.

The stranger smiles, kind and sympathetic. “Better it than you though, right?” 

“I guess,” Lance says.

The stranger’s still wearing his clothes, a black shirt with a vest pulled overtop. Lance frowns and peers into the ocean, pretty sure he can see a pair of dark slacks and boots paddling through the water.

“You should have kicked off your shoes, at least,” Lance says.

Water sloshes as the stranger cants his head, raising an eyebrow. The white portion of his hair is sticking flat against his brow, and though it should probably make him look stilly, he still seems kind of cool. “Criticism? Really?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Uh huh. Think you feel up to swimming back to shore?”

“Sure, yeah, I can do that. I’m actually a really good swimmer, you know. I know I almost just died, but—”

“I don’t think you would have died,” the stranger says. “Still, I’m glad I was here.”

They swim back together, Lance pulling out ahead as they approach the beach. He laughs when his toes drag against the sand. 

“See! I told you I could swim!”

“You did,” the stranger says, out of breath. There’s colour resting high on his cheeks, and though Lance knows it’s just from exertion, it still makes him look haggard and unwell.

“You okay?” Lance asks.

“Sure,” the stranger says.

He falls a step behind Lance as they trek out of the water, the sound of his feet splashing through the shallows grows more and more faint the closer they get to shore.)

 

 

The alien skitter away, whimpering when ze places too much weight on zis broken limb. Bone or cartilage has splintered through zis grey skin, and though zis blood oozes out as a watery, clear fluid, the drops that have fallen to the floor are already beginning to dry in congealed, yellow smears. The scent of it is almost sweet, vaguely reminiscent of something Champion knew of long ago. Unbidden, he pictures a brightly coloured fruit weighted in his hand, imagines himself pressing his thumbnail into the thick rind and splitting it open. 

Something more stirs alongside the image, and for a moment it’s almost as though Champion has become a passenger in his own body, unable to do anything more than look out and witness what’s happening around him. Anger or fear rise up inside him, sticking in the back of his throat like bile, and Champion sways momentarily before swallowing it back, crushing it down.

“Please,” the alien says, pressing zimself into the corner and scratching blindly against the wall as if ze’s trying to claw through it. Champion doesn’t remember the creature's name, though he’s sure he was told when Haggar first outlined the mission. “Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“A lie,” Sendak drones, long bored with the alien’s sniveling. “We know they contacted you.”

“My people are loyal to the Galra Empire,” the alien vows, periscope eyes swiveling about wildly, bugging out beneath zis wrinkled, drooping lids. “In all our years of unity we have never strayed—”

“Yet you did nothing to alert us to the paladins’ presence. You allowed them to leave, unopposed.”

“You must understand, there was no time! They arrived so quickly—”

Sendak scoffs, light flashing across his eyepiece as he shakes his head, shoulders hitching with suppressed laughter. Champion steps away from his side.

“No, no, please—”

“Your people must be reminded that betrayal has consequences,” Sendak says. 

It will be simple enough, for Champion to take the creature by zis skinny neck, to wrap his fingers around zis throat and squeeze until something gives beneath his palm. Sendak may not wish for the alien’s immediate death, but Champion trusts he will stop him before goes too far. Haggar wouldn’t trust him to be Champion’s handler, otherwise.

His prosthetic activates with a hum as he reaches out. There’s old blood sticking in the joints of his knuckles, clogging up the mechanics of his wrist. It’s leaked too deep inside, causing a murky sensation to skitter up through the arm’s mechanics, scrubbing along the cluster of nerves that connects Champion’s prosthetic to flesh. Champion has known greater discomfort, but the trickle of sensation quickly turns into a gnawing itch beneath his skin that he finds difficult to ignore. He wants to sink his fingers into the scarred tissue, wants to dig his nails in deep and scratch down to the bone until it stops—

(he has to make it _stop_ )

“What is it?” Sendak says.

Shiro sways where he stands, as unsteady as a sleepwalker still caught in the throes of a dream. The alien has curled in on zimself, all four of zis trembling arms raised above zis head. Ze doesn’t seem to notice Shiro’s hesitation, doesn’t look up when he withdraws his arm. Shiro wants to tell zim to run, but can’t wrap his head around the words well enough to voice them.

Sendak grabs the base of Shiro’s neck, claws digging into skin when he spins him around. He strikes Shiro’s face with the back of his hand, driving his own teeth into the inside of his cheek with enough force to draw blood.

“What are you doing?” Sendak hisses, catching Shiro’s chin between his fingers, forcing him to look at him. Shiro still feels sluggish and strangely disconnected from his body. He can’t reactivate his prosthetic, can’t pry himself free from Sendak’s grip. He snarls at him like an animal, livid at his own helplessness.

Sendak laughs, a wild sound that echoes inside Shiro’s head like he’s hearing it through a warped speaker.

“She said this might happen.” Sendak’s grip on Shiro’s face tightens, fingers digging into the hinges of his jaw. “She insisted to Lord Zarkon that it wouldn’t, but when the witch was pressed she admitted it was possible.”

Shiro shakes his head. He wouldn’t do this, not in a thousand different realities, not for anything the Galra could ever offer to him. His lips feel numb when he tries to speak, his tongue heavy and thick inside his mouth. 

“What did she do? What did she do to me?”

“The programming should reactivate soon,” Sendak says, unconcerned. His gaze shifts, focusing beyond Shiro as his mechanical hand churns and clicks. Sendak’s lifts his arm and sends it out like a whip, a glowing band of quintessence sparking on the air in its wake.

The alien shouts, letting out a wet, gurgling sound as ze dies, but Shiro can barely hear zim. There’s a pressure building inside his head, memories that could be but aren’t his own unfurling behind his eyes. He’s strapped to a table with something hard between his teeth, a headset forced down over his ears. Haggar speaks to him soothingly as a current of electricity is run through his body, as his mind goes white and empty and everything that’s _him_ is blocked out and sealed away.

His surroundings flicker. Sendak vanishes only to be replaced by someone worst, someone with slitted eyes and long, sharp fingers, someone who Shiro knows and hates with every molecule of his existence, but for a moment can hardly seem to recognize.

Shiro screams, and tastes blood in his mouth.

 

 

That’s how he returns to them.

Shiro clamps his hands down over his ears, shaking his head back and forth. His chest hurts and his throat is raw. He feels like his skull’s going to split open between his palms.

“Shiro, Shiro what’s wrong?”

“He’s bleeding again. Here, hand me the— yes, thank you.”

Someone takes his wrists, urging him to drop his arms. Shiro winces but allows it, standing there as Hunk wipes at his face with a cloth as though Shiro were a child, swiping it across his nose before folding it in half and pressing it against his ear.

Shiro frowns, looking down as he turns over his hands, blinking slowly at the slick, red palms of his gloves.

“It’s all right,” Coran says, placing a hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “Let’s just get you cleaned up, hm?”

“It was different,” Shiro says. He looks around wildly for Slav. “I couldn’t, it wasn’t me, I wasn’t _me—_ ”

“Shiro, we’re gonna figure this out, okay?” Lance says. “It’s gonna be fine.”

It’s not, it’s _not_ —

“It’s not!” Slav snakes his way through the crowd, pushing up to his full height so he can look Shiro in the eye. “What does that mean ‘you were not you’? You are being unclear!”

“It was like I was trapped in my own body, watching someone else do things.”

“Ah,” Slav says, slinking downwards. “That is not a good sign.”

“You think?” Keith snaps. “What’s going on? You said you could fix this!”

“I said I could try to fix this. It is not my fault that he is not providing the correct information!”

“I’m trying,” Shiro says, spitting the words out between gritted teeth.

“Then answer my questions! What else is there? Where have you been?”

“I don’t know!” Shiro shouts, dragging his hands back over his scalp, fingers clawing through his hair. There’s too much, there’s _too much_ , a thousand different lifetimes brawling for space inside his head and he can’t make room for them all. 

“You do!” 

Slav is, undoubtedly, one of the least threatening alien species Shiro has encountered throughout all his time in space, but for a moment he is formidable. His red irises darken around the rectangular shape of his pupils as the tip of his beak snaps with irritation. His limbs are weak and his hands are small, but he grabs at the collar of Shiro’s armour and shakes him with a ferocity that catches him off guard, smacking his cheeks just sharply enough to sting. “Think, think!”

“This is not helping!” Allura snaps, yanking Slav back with a violent jerk of her arm. 

“You are not helping!” Slav wriggles in her grasp, his tail lashing through the air. “You see that he is sick! If this continues much longer he will not be able to withstand it!”

“What— what does that mean?” Hunk asks. “You never mentioned anything about that!”

“It doesn’t mean anything because we’re not gonna let it happen,” Keith says.

“But we’re not getting anywhere!” Pidge says, throwing up her hands. “Slav is right, we need to try something else. There’s an inconsistency in the data we’ve been collecting from the Black Lion, so there must be something you’re not telling us, Shiro.”

Shiro shakes his head. He doesn’t know what else he has to offer them.

“Inconsistency?” Lance says. “Didn’t think about bringing that up before, Pidge?”

“I didn’t notice before! Just— look.” Her fingers dance along the screen of her tablet, bringing up the graph that’s meant to be tracking Shiro’s movements. “If Slav’s calculations are right, we know Shiro only spends a few minutes in each reality, but sometimes he doesn’t return to the astral plane for almost an hour.”

“Maybe you’re readings are wrong?” Keith says. “Hell, even Shiro doesn’t know all the different places he’s been to.”

“And we are kind of working with fringe science here,” Hunk points out. “Does time even work the same way on the astral plane?”

Shiro blinks. He teeters, stumbling a step back into Pidge’s workstation, knocking a computer right off the desk as he grips at the ledge for balance. He smells flowers, feels water lapping at his chin and leaves brushing over his hair. He looks down, half expecting to find a muddy animal wriggling in his arms. 

“I saw you,” Shiro says.

Hunk startles, the ends of his bandana fluttering around his shoulders as he turns to Shiro. “Come again?”

“You were younger. There was a dog—”

“I was swimming,” Lance says suddenly, staring at Shiro like he’s never seen him before. Shiro nods, his heart fluttering in his chest. Yes, yes, he can remember that—!

“Oh,” Hunk says, eyes going wide. “ _Oh._ You, yeah, we found Piper.” 

“You were in the garden,” Allura breathes, hands rising to her mouth.

Coran blinks, swaying where he stands, taking a step back to gather himself.

“I couldn’t sort it out,” Shiro says. “I’m sorry, it was all so mixed together.”

“Okay what the hell!” Lance says, exasperated. “I thought we were dealing with alternate realities here, not… whatever this is!”

“Time travel?” Hunk offers hesitantly. “I mean, if _we_ remember these things then they couldn’t have happened in an alternate reality. Gotta be this one.”

Slav hums, seemingly unimpressed by the revelation despite all his needling. “It is unlikely, but not impossible for both to take place at once.”

“Something similar happened to me when the the castle was stuck in the corrupted wormhole,” Allura says. “Coran was clearly regressing in age, but the mice kept changing into different animals. That could have been the same kind of situation, could it not? Time travel and alternate realities, occurring simultaneously.”

“But why didn’t any of you remember this until now?” Keith asks.

“Well,” Coran says slowly. “Why didn’t Shiro remember?”

“Oh my God.” Pidge eyes grow bright as she practically begins to vibrate with excitement. “What if it’s us? What if we’re the pattern you were looking for, Slav? If we assume Shiro only time travels to see us, then—”

“Wait, wait, I don’t remember anything new.” Keith says.

“No, me neither, but that could just mean he hasn’t—”

 

 

(Katie presses her hands flat against the cement, wincing as she pushes herself up. There are red scrapes dotted across her elbows and lining the heels of her hands, little bits of gravel sticking against the torn skin. She tries brushing them away with her fingers, but has to stop because it hurts too much and she doesn’t want to start crying.

“Oh, Pidge…”

Someone stops in front of her, shiny black boots stark against the white of the sidewalk. Whoever it is crouches down, tucking their hands beneath Katie’s arms and gently lifting her up, checking over her face with soft, grey eyes that could almost be familiar.

“You okay?” The stranger asks.

Katie screws up her face, nodding, swallowing down the hot scratchiness in her throat.

“You sure?”

“I fell off my bike,” she says.

“That happens sometimes,” the stranger admits. “But I think you’ll live. Here, c’mon.”

There’s a park across the street. Katie wanders over to the water fountain, rinsing the dirt off the cuts on her hands while the stranger stands aside with her bike, untangling one of the purple tassels hanging off the handlebars while he waits.

“Feel better?” he asks.

Katie nods.

“What are you doing out here on your own?”

“Matt was watching me,” she says.

“Right.”

“He’s bad at it.”

“I see that. Do you know how to get home?”

Katie frowns. It’s a stupid question to ask, even if the stranger doesn’t seem like a stupid person. It bothers her, when things don’t fit together as they should. “Yes?”

“Always with the attitude. Can I walk with you?”

“Okay.”

The stranger doesn’t offer his hand for Katie to hold, which she finds both nice and peculiar. Adults always want to drag her around like she’s a baby. It’s okay when Mommy or Daddy help her cross the street or the parking lot, but annoying when other grownups try to do it.

“Why’d you call me Pidge?” She asks.

The stranger lifts his hand, scratching at the back of his neck. His prosthetic arm clicks when it moves, flashing in the sunlight. 

“I don’t know,” he says. She doesn’t believe him. “It suits you, though.”

“Daddy calls me Pidgeon, sometimes. But Matt says pigeons are gross.”

“Yeah well, Matt’s gross,” the stranger says.

“He is!” Katie bursts out, making the stranger laugh.

“I like your arm,” she tells him. “Can I see it?”

“A little later,” the stranger says, distracted. He turns his head, jerking around like someone’s called out his name, but Katie doesn’t hear anything but the wind. “Here, you should take your bike.”

Katie does. The paint’s a little scraped up along the side, but she doesn’t mind. It will still work just fine, and it even looks a little more interesting, now. She lifts her head, wanting to tell the stranger how cool it is that his arm is made out of metal, to ask what he actually means by the word _later_ because sometimes people use that word differently, but he’s already gone.)

 

 

It's too bright.

Shiro turns his face away, his cheek dragging over the scratchy, threadbare pillowcase tucked beneath his head. Even with his eyes shut he can see the harsh glow of the overhead light burning through his lids, but when he tries to lift his arms to cover his eyes something catches at his wrist, holding him back.

"Good morning, Shiro."

Shiro lifts his head, touching his chin to his collarbone. There's a leather strap stretched out across his chest, a padded cuff encircling his left wrist and what can only be described as a chain looped around his prosthetic. He tries to move his feet, dragging his heels back and forth along the end of the bed, but the cords around his ankles hold tight and pull when he attempts to swing his legs over the mattress.

"Now, what kind of day do you want this to be?"

Shrio turns his eyes to the woman sitting in a chair across the room. She’s tapping a pen against the clipboard in her hand, wearing a familiar grey uniform with the Galaxy Garrison symbol pinned at her lapel. 

"Oh my God," Shiro says, letting his head thunk back down against the pillow. It’s so thin he can feel the metal bedframe rattle at the impact. “This can’t be happening. You can’t actually be doing this.”

“We’ve discussed this, Shiro,” the woman says, adjusting her glasses. “Until we know more about what happened to we can’t allow you to leave. You could be a danger to yourself or others.”

“So you’re what? Keeping me prisoner?”

“Keeping you to be safe.”

“Are you studying me?” Shiro asks. The white light of the room seems to darken, shifting towards a deep violet before snapping back. Shiro closes his eyes, swallowing down a wave of nausea.

“Now, Shiro—”

“Does anyone know I’m alive? My parents? Friends?”

“We’re not going over this. Not again. It’s exhausting.” 

The woman stands, moving swiftly towards the exit, slowly shaking her head. “I really did hope we could be productive today. But I see you have no interest in that.”

She presses a buzzer on the wall, and Shiro counts the seconds it takes for someone to respond before he’s even aware of what he’s doing. He reaches number nine when the door swings open.

“Ma’am?” 

“Our patient is anxious, Doctor. Please sedate him.”

The doctor pauses, awkwardly shifting his weight from one leg to the other, and for a moment Shiro almost believes he’s going to say no. 

“Of course,” the doctor chirps, walking briskly towards the small cart parked in the corner of the room.

Shiro waits for his back to turn before jerking against the restraints, activating his prosthetic arm with a flash of dark light. The Doctors spins around and rears back, fumbling the needle in his hand as he stumbles into the wall. 

White-hot pain laces up Shiro’s prosthetic, spasming around his shoulder, spreading outwards along his chest and back. The woman is shouting for backup into the mic at her collar, shouting at the Doctor to stop just standing there and do _something_. Shiro breaks the chain with a hard yank of his arm, works his fingers up beneath the leather strap and slices clean through it. Maybe he can change something here, give the Shiro of this reality a chance, a head start. 

The Doctor lunges at him, stabbing wildly with the needle, and it’s luck more than anything else that allows him the opening to jab it into Shiro’s neck. Shiro grabs the front of the Doctor’s white coat, throwing him clear over the opposite side of the mattress, but it’s too late. The sedative is in his blood now, coursing through him, and Shiro falls back

 

 

against the black, watery surface of the astral plane.

He lies there for a long time, chest heaving, his hair and the back of his shirt growing damp even though the ground beneath him feels dry when he touches it with his hand. 

He probably just made things worst for that Shiro. They would increase security on him now, demand that he activate his prosthetic again in a controlled environment and not believe him if he claims he can’t. 

“Dammit,” Shiro hisses, slamming his hand against the ground again and again. He feels the impact, the cool texture of the glassy surface crashing against his curled fingers, but the hard jolt it should send shuddering up his arm isn’t there. It makes him want to scream, to dig his nails into the seams of this place and tear it apart. 

“Pathetic.”

Shiro sniffs, wiping his face with the back of his hand, unsure of when it was his eyes started growing wet. He sits up but doesn’t bother standing, doesn’t care if the position he’s in makes him look small or weak. He’s been those things in front of her before, too many times, but he’s not afraid to face her as he is now.

He wonders if it should surprise him more, to be greeted by Haggar in this place, but deep down Shiro suspects this encounter is long overdue. 

“This is a waste of your potential,” she tells him. The red lines that cut over the edges of her lips lengthen like an open wound when she speaks. “I would have made you more than this. I would have made you strong.”

She looks almost like a phantom to Shiro, blurry and undefined at the edges, moments away from dissipating into the air like a lazy curl of smoke.

“Maybe that’s your problem,” Shiro says. “You never offered me anything I wanted.”

“I can help you leave this place,” she says, teeth flashing into something too cruel to be a smile.

Shiro pulls in a slow, even breath. He’s not caught off guard by the offer, but the weight of it still settles over him like an anvil. He escaped captivity before. He had Ulaz’s help, but he knows more, now, understands the stakes. Shiro has seen what Haggar wants of him, and maybe he can use that, play along and pretend until he finds an opening to flee. 

(And if it doesn’t? If she gets inside his head and shreds him apart, remakes him into something else?)

“What other choice do you have?” Haggar presses, stepping closer, her cloak dragging out behind her. “Your paladins cannot save you.”

“They’re trying.”

“They will fail. Their meddling has stretched you too thin.”

“ _Their_ meddling. But not yours?” Shiro asks. “Did you help Zarkon come back? Is that why he's gone?”

“You will die here.”

“No,” Shiro says. “Not here.”

Distantly, he can almost hear the others calling to him, can see the blue-tinted light of the castleship glowing just outside his line of vision. Maybe he’s already there, somehow, maybe time has folded in on itself and he just hasn’t realized that it’s already too late to change anything. The astral plane almost seems to tip on its axis, and a magnificent, skull-cracking headache blooms behind Shiro’s eyes, the taste of blood rising in his throat. A strange, skittering sensation falling over his shoulders, like nails or claws scrabbling at his back.

Haggar flashes her teeth and snarls, her bony fingers curling in the open air. “You will not have another chance.”

Shiro’s unsure if that’s true. He’s had hundreds of different chances, as far as he can tell. Surely there’s a version of himself that doesn’t succumb to this, even if it’s not him.

He smiles, and all at once it’s the easiest thing in the world to deny her. “I’ve been meeting them all over again, you know.”

Haggar draws back, caught off guard by his sentiment, and that at least is some small kind of victory.

Shiro closes his eyes. He doesn’t flinch when she starts screaming, spitting out insults and threats, telling him she’ll find his paladins and take them apart piece by piece, grind them down to dust and scatter their remains to the end of the universe. Shiro doesn’t doubt that she’ll try, but they’ll still have each other after this is all over, and he thinks that will be enough to protect them.

He turns his head, spitting out a mouthful of blood, watching with a detached fascination as the colour of it darkens to match the black swirl of liquid holding him up. He draws his hand over his mouth and stops fighting against the pull of the astral plane, allowing it to sweep him away. 

There’s still someone he has yet to see, and it wouldn’t be right to go without finishing the loop.

 

 

(There’s an aluminum bat propped up against the wall in the back of the coat closet, nearly hidden behind a long, green jacket. Keith’s not sure if his foster father or mother ever played baseball or if they just keep it there in case someone tries to break in. 

No one’s home when Keith takes it after school one day. 

The junkyard is only three blocks away. Keith throws the bat over his shoulder as he walks there, his old shoes scruffing against the concrete. The rubber sole on his left foot is beginning to wear down and peel back, and it catches against the edge of the sidewalk twice as he makes his way down the street. Keith’s not sure if his foster parents would buy him a new pair if he asked. They don’t seem like bad people, but then, neither had Mr. and Mrs. Moore, and Keith has learned by now that it’s safer to be cautious.

The gate is locked when he arrives. Keith throws the bat over the chain link fence that surrounds the property and climbs up after it, pushing himself over the top and landing on the other side with a hard thump. Little puffs of dirt billow out from beneath his feet, and Keith wipes his hands down along the legs of his jeans as he stands.

He wanders by a few old trucks and a stack of worn tires, pushing further into the compound. He ends up choosing a vehicle that’s little more than a shell, already gutted of its engine and seats. The tail lights are busted but the front window is still perfectly intact, dirty and smudged and covered in some kind of brown gunk, but otherwise unmarred by cracks or chips.

Keith lifts the bat over his head and brings the end down on the glass. The sound of it shattering is louder than he thought it would be, which frightens him. Someone’s bound to hear, to come running, but Keith’s heart is already pounding hard beneath his ribs, adrenaline flashing through his blood like fire, and he doesn’t want to smother down that feeling.

He smashes the bat against the already broken headlight, the bumper and license plate and the passenger side door, hitting the vehicle again and again until his arms ache and his chest is heaving with the effort of swinging the bat. His knuckles are bleeding for some reason, and he’s a little worried that maybe some glass flew up and got caught in his skin. He doesn't know how he’s going to hide it later. He’ll have to look for band-aids when he goes home, or maybe his foster parents won’t even notice the scratches.

“Keith?” 

Keith spins around, the torn sole of his left shoe snagging against the gravel, tripping him up. The stranger that somehow knows his name takes a step back. 

“Whoa,” he says. “It’s okay.”

Keith reels, his head spinning. He’ll call the cops, he’ll call them and tell them there’s some crazy kid on the loose, and they’ll bring him back to the house and Mr and Mrs. Anderson will be so upset and it will be all his _fault_ —

“Hey, hey.”

The stranger crouches down in front him, placing a hand on Keith’s shoulder, leaving it there while Keith scrubs a hand over his eyes, pulling in a watery breath.

Keith doesn’t usually like being touched. It makes his stomach turn unpleasantly, makes his palms sweat. But for some reason the hand on his shoulder doesn’t bother him.

“I’m sorry,” Keith says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay. You’re having a rough time right now, aren’t you?”

Keith nods. The counselors say things like that all the time. They tell him that he’s acting out, that he’ll settle down eventually. Keith doesn’t like it, doesn’t know why he should have to sit still and be quiet when all he wants to do is scream.

“Let me see you hands,” the stranger says.

Keith does. The stranger turns them over, his jaw tightening as he looks at Keith’s bloodied knuckles.

“You should be more careful if you’re gonna do things like this,” the stranger says, being practical, not admonishing. “Let's go, there’s glass everywhere.”

“Are you going to tell on me?” Keith asks.

“No. Who are you living with right now?”

“Huh?”

“Your foster family.”

“... Andersons.”

“Show your mom your hands when you get home, okay? You might need stitches.”

“She’ll be mad.”

“She’ll be worried. It’s different.”

Keith shifts his weight, hunches up his shoulders. It would still be better, if he took care of it himself.

The stranger sighs. He looks tired and sad, but also like he understands. “It’s fine, I know you’re just going to do what you want.”

The stranger gives him a boost back over the fence but doesn’t bother climbing up after Keith. He crosses his arms behind the gate, mouth tilting into small, melancholy smile. “You should get home.”

Keith digs the end of the bat into the ground. He feels like he should say something, but thank you seems unnecessary and goodbye seems inappropriately final. In the end he just turns around and walks away, bringing his hand up to his mouth to suck on his torn knuckles. He doesn’t look back.)

 

 

This is the last time he’ll return to them. Shiro knows it, with a strange sort of certainty he can’t rationalize even to himself, but he knows.

“It’s okay,” he says. They did their best, and they need to understand that he doesn’t blame them. “It’s okay, you tried—”

“Shiro,” Keith says. “Shut up.”

Everyone but Slav is already wearing a synchronization headset, and Hunk pushes one down over Shiro’s hair not a moment after he appears. Coran loops an arm around Shiro’s waist, lowering him to the floor as he struggles to come back to himself against the rush of new thoughts and feelings now warring for his attention.

_Strange_ , Allura says, her voice clear and bright, floating promptly to the the surface of Shiro’s mind.

_Pretty cool, right?_ Lance says.

_Slav—_ Pidge starts before cutting herself off, shaking her head and clearing her throat. “I mean, Slav?”

Lance and Hunk laugh at her, sitting directly in front of Shiro, shoulder-to-shoulder. Keith even cracks a smile. Their amusement flutters through the link, soothing over Shiro like a balm. 

“Hm?” Slav says. For all his fretting earlier, he almost sounds bored.

“Wanna give this a shot?”

“I suppose we might as well,” Slav sighs, and Shiro hears the hurried chatter of a keyboard.

Slav flicks a switch, and the cables running between the Black Lion and Pidge’s computers crackle and pull taught, violet electricity snapping around them. Slav squeaks and scampers back, and Shiro scrambles for purchase as an all-too-familiar pull starts digging deep inside his chest, his stomach bottoming out as the world wobbles uncertainly, tipping around and flipping back. It’s not going to work, it’s not—

The Black Lion’s roar shudders through Shiro, proud and commanding. He feels her presence like a fire at his back, a swirling infernal that could swallow him whole. The others flinch around him, but the Black Lion is careful, nuzzling at the bond that links her to Shiro, assuring him it’s still there, that she would never leave for good. She remains even as the astral plane starts to flicker in and out of existence, an encompassing bubble that hasn’t yet popped, standing in as a shield between them.

_Don’t worry,_ someone says. Shiro’s doesn’t know if they’re speaking out loud or not, but the words stay with him. Someone grabs his hand and there are fingers curling over the back of his neck, a body curling close against his side. _We’ve got you this time. Promise._

Shiro squeezes at the hand that’s been tucked into his own, drops his brow down to rest on the bony shoulder huddled up next to him.

_That was nice of you,_ Pidge tells him. _To pick me up when I fell off my bike._

_He saved me from drowning,_ Lance says. _It was kind of awesome._

Shiro huffs. _You weren’t going to drown_.

_Piper’s buried behind Dad’s shed,_ Hunk says fondly. _I had her for six years._

Allura laughs. _Father never did believe that I saw you. But he humoured me, sometimes._

Coran makes an awkward sound next to him. _My squadron may have been left with the impression that the jungle I was situated in was haunted_.

Keith says nothing, emotion rising up in the place of words, shame and gratitude tangled together in a messy knot. Shiro frowns, does what he can to loosen it, and twitches at the vague sensation of his fingers being softly batted away.

Time ticks by, each second passing like a millennia, and Shiro doesn’t leave. He’s almost certain this is the longest he’s remained in one place since Zarkon first tore him from the Black Lion, but he can't be sure and is too afraid to ask, crushing the thought down before it can reach the others. He doesn't think he could withstand the final blow that any kind of false hope would strike.

The shaking begins as a series of starts and jerks, trembling up Shiro’s spine and down his arms, making his metal fingers rattle together even when he curls them up into his fist. His teeth grind together and he can't stop the pitiful noises rising up in his throat as his lungs squeeze tight beneath his ribs. He lets out a hiccuping laugh, a choked sob.

The others press closer.

_It’s okay,_ they say. 

_We’re here,_ they say.

_We’re not going anywhere, and neither are you._


End file.
